


horseshoes and cobalt blues

by scarecrowes



Category: Boardwalk Empire
Genre: Gen, Implied Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-15
Updated: 2012-09-15
Packaged: 2017-11-14 06:14:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/512183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scarecrowes/pseuds/scarecrowes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lucky plays Vic Vega to Carolyn's Mia Wallace, sans angeldust, plus drinking and heartache.</p>
            </blockquote>





	horseshoes and cobalt blues

Charlie doesn’t remember where AR said he was going. He should (he did  _before_ ) but now he just knows what he was asked to do in his absence.  
  
“Keep Carolyn company for me.”  
  
“...What?”  
  
“You heard me, Charlie.” AR just raised an eyebrow, pouring himself more coffee, the curt smile he gave saying nothing but _there shouldn’t need to be more questions_. It had been three hours into what had ended up being a fifteen hour card game with  _friends_ all the way from California. He didn’t know how AR did it - by the tenth hour it was the second dawn he’d seen in two days, and Lucky could hardly manage to  _watch_ the game, let alone _play_  it.  
  
And now he’s walking down the street in the late evening with Carolyn Rothstein tucked against his arm. It isn’t as if they’d never met, the times before when he’d joined AR at the track or she’d stopped by Lindy’s to give her husband something he’d called home for. But this was _different,_ enough that they were quiet - at least now, because he’d already taken her to dinner and a picture, (for more than he’d want to spend on his own girl whenever he had one - but he knew too well what she was used to, to dare tell her no) and they’d simply run out of things to say.  
  
“You don’t think it’s a little funny that Arnold asked you to take me out while he was gone?”  
  
She’d been drinking wine at dinner, and watched him over her glass when she’d asked him that.  
  
He shifted slightly in his seat.  
  
“Yeah,” he managed. “I think it’s kinda funny. I mean it ain’t like - isn’t like he don’t got me doing things for him all the time, but... yeah. It’s funny.”  
  
She’d laughed - really laughed, not the forced kind girls gave at dinner parties. And she _smiled_ , mentioning that he wasn’t the only one.  
  
It surprised him, because for all their brief hellos, she’s  _warm._  He knows it’s not for him, because Arnold’s wife ought to be as collected and careful as Arnold himself, soft and smiling even when they lie through their teeth. But her perfume is something faint and flowery, and the way she watches him doesn’t feel like he’s being questioned. Still, for all her trimmed blonde curls there’s a sharp part of her that reminds him of Gillian - and of course, it doesn’t make his guts roil in spite even a _bit._  
  
He takes her up the stairs of their building in the upper 80s with her arm still hooked under his, and he doesn’t fail to notice that something’s missing on her finger.  
  
“Come inside, Charlie.”  
  
He doesn’t know what he expected, but it wasn’t that.  
  
“Ahh, I dunno if I really oughta-”  
  
“Charlie.” She rests a hand on his, her thumb touching just under his sleeve. “It’s alright.”  
  
She takes his coat and hat and gets him a drink - and one for herself, something stronger than he usually sees girls drinking. They sit in the parlor, a seat apart even though he’s on one big enough for both of them.  
  
(AR does the same thing often - Lucky wonders if that’s how they live here, keeping distances. He doesn’t think it clearly - but it feels  _wrong_.)  
  
“He didn’t tell me where he was going, you know.” Carolyn swirls her drink, watching the ice shift and clatter. “He doesn’t have to, of course, but.”  
  
She sits back, smiling gently - it doesn’t match her tone, though, and Charlie doesn’t understand it.  
  
“It would just be nice, is all.”  
  
He never was a confidante. He bristles, hides it under fidgeting and drinks - hard enough that the ice hits his teeth.  
  
He opens his eyes again and she’s looking at him, curious like it’s the most innocent thing in the world.  
  
“You don’t know, do you?”  
  
He opens his mouth even though his throat is burning. “He didn’t tell me, neither.”  
  
And honestly, right now, he just doesn’t remember - but he still knows what AR is doing there, and he can’t tell her  _that._  
  
She just nods, but it’s not like she believes him -  and for all there was that Gillian called  _a roughneck bit,_  Lucky knows when someone’s used to being lied to.  
  
And it’s quiet again, for a while - they drink, because she invited him in and he can’t leave the way he’s used to, can’t barge out in a flurry of violence and an utter lack of believable excuses. He wouldn’t to AR - he can’t to her. He sits and doesn’t notice how he’s sliding down in his chair as his drinks disappear, and Carolyn’s moved a seat closer, now.  
  
“I remember when Arnold came home with this,” she taps his tie with a finger, her tiny pink nails touching tiny grey horseshoes. “It’s not something he’d ever wear, but I still didn’t know who it was for.”  
  
Charlie snorts, sitting up just enough to look at her. “He has a sense a’ humor like that.”  
  
Her head tilts, blonde waves tumbling. “How’s that?”  
  
And he looks at her - because she’s watching him with honest confusion and some small sense of amusement. It takes him a minute to realize she doesn’t _know._  
  
“Lucky,” he tells her, and reaches for his glass again before he realizes it’s just ice, half-melted.  
  
“What?”  
  
“That’s what they call me. A nickname, like.”  
  
She shakes her head, incredulous. “Who calls you that?”  
  
“I dunno - everybody.” he shrugs, and they’re leaned in close then, like they’re sharing some secret. She’s grinning, too, like he’s telling her a fantasy and not some piece of himself she shouldn’t know all about. The edges of her husband’s life she doesn’t touch. (He’s surprised she can’t - she’s so warm and nothing like the glassy being he expected her to be, diamonds and skirts. She  _loves_ , and that makes this so much... easier.)  
  
And then she  _laughs._  
  
“What?” he scowls, heat rising enough in his chest that he snaps at her, the same way he would anyone.  
  
“I’m sorry,” she manages, still giggling, and puts her hand to her lips like she can cover it up. “I just think it’s a funny name.”  
  
“Yeah, well.” he growls, and glares at his feet because he can’t glare at her. Her hand rests on his shoulder then, small and reassuring.  
  
“I am sorry,” she says, quiet again, and when he does look up she’s biting her lip, white on pink. “If I offended you, I mean. I wasn’t-”  
  
“S’fine,” he huffs, and realizes blankly, on the edges of alcohol, that he wants to kiss her - but he won’t.  
  
“Why do they call you that? Everyone?” She sounds curious, still on his shoulder like she wants to remind him she’s there. He so rarely meets someone who knows nothing, and realizes he can tell her anything he wants - that he was stabbed, shot at, beaten, and lived. That he won a card game he shouldn’t have.  
  
He could tell her the truth.  
  
“It’s ‘cause,” he says, finally, canting his head in toward hers so he can whisper, his fingers cupped around his lips. “I make my own luck.”  
  
And they both laugh, warmed enough with liquor that she ends up leaning on his shoulder, his arm curled around her. He doesn’t belong there, but her hands rest on his all the same.  
  
“I like the tie, though.” she sighs, amused in an afterthought. “Arnold has good taste.”  
  
He laughs at that, too, because it’s true as well as awful, and it doesn’t matter if it’s with his nose is half buried in her hair. She smells like lavender, and though his loyalty prickles under his skin, AR isn’t _here._  
  
“I should go to bed,” Carolyn says eventually, because they’ve both noticed the dark outside the windows filtering to blue, and he feels like she’s up against his ear with how her voice sounds through his chest. He thinks without comprehending, _it’s like it’s echoing, or something_ , and maybe AR asked him to stick around his wife because this place is awful big, for just one person.  
  
He watches as she teeters up on the heels that she never took off, swaying just enough that he stands to hold onto her. She seems surprised, and it takes her a minute to shake it even enough to respond.  
  
“I suppose... I need some help.” she admits - and makes some sound, surprised and too loud, because he picks her up around her shoulders and knees, and lifts her to his chest before so much as asking. She isn’t very hard to carry, and he hadn’t been expecting that - it’s very easy to forget how small she is.  
  
She’s quiet as he brings her up the stairs, her hands folded at the back of his neck like she’s scared of falling, but he’s still steadier on his feet than she was. She directs him toward the right room with her voice almost too low for him to hear it, but he manages anyway, pushing the door open with his shoulder.  
  
Everything’s white, the carpet and blankets and walls, with black accents in the curtains and pillows. He can tell it’s all neat, too, even in nothing but the light from the hall - all carefully organized and kept perfectly clean. There’s a jacket folded over a chair in the corner, though - and only after a long moment when that dull thunder rises up in his chest again, does Charlie remember who it must belong to.  
  
He goes to set Carolyn down all the same, but she clings and sighs, _stay._  
  
“Nah, I can’t do that.”  
  
The yellow curl that stayed so perfectly over her ear all night is pushed closer to her face by the pillows now, and she looks up at him with wide eyes lost in his shadow falling over her.  
  
“Stay here, Charlie.” He’s still stooped over her because she’s pulling on his shirt and tie, horseshoes and cobalt under her thin fingers. “Just... like this.”  
  
And she doesn’t say  _please_. He knows the smile she gives him then, the same one AR does every time he does right, the same one he did when Lucky straightened his tie and said  _yeah, alright_ in spite of his confusion. It’s the smile that says _there is always a reason_ , and if there’s more desperation in it from her, then it still isn’t why he lets go and lays down.  
  
He does manage to get them both out of their shoes at the very least, but she curls her arms around his chest and _squeezes_  before pillowing herself there. He thinks she’s asleep after a moment, considers moving, considers _leaving_ , but then pale eyes dart up to look at him and they’re wide and inquisitive and _there._  
  
“Lucky?”  
  
“...Yeah?”  
  
“I just... wanted to...”  
  
She’s sleepy and slurred, and he doesn’t know that she’s been very nearly alone for so long - and it will be three months more before he sees the marks on AR’s arms (nevermind the way he starts to twitch at things that aren’t there). But she does, and she  _has_ , and when she leans up and kisses the barely visible scars on Charlie’s cheek she knows all about  _why_  - even if he doesn’t.  
  
“Thank you.”

 


End file.
